Taxi for Maicon? The inside story of Tottenham’s first Champions League run
Charlie Eccleshare Oct 30, 2020
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Should a European Super League ever materialise, then adventures like Tottenham’s Champions League run of 2010-11 will never happen again.
A closed shop is designed to stop upstarts from bloodying the noses of the more established clubs, which is precisely what Spurs did in what was a heady, intoxicating march to the last eight. It was everything that makes football so thrilling: travelling to exotic locations, hitting highs you didn’t think possible, and above all the feeling of doing something for the first time. A decade on, it’s strange to think that Spurs are so established in Europe’s top competition that they could be part of the Super League that aims to block out those attempting the sort of journey they’ve been on.
Back in 2010, Spurs had not competed in the European Cup or Champions League for 48 years. They had tried to get there — boy, had they tried — but somehow, something always got in the way. Dropped points here, a dodgy lasagne there.
But now, here they were and, led by Harry Redknapp, they were determined to do it their way. Taking the game to opponents who, at a time when the continental game was only just emerging from the Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho-led attritional approach, didn’t know what to make of Spurs’ foot-to-the-floor high-speed football. This is the Champions League, show some decorum! You can’t just turn up and play a 4-4-2 with wingers!
Spurs also adapted at times and played more conservatively, best demonstrated in the 1-0 win at AC Milan, but their enterprising attitude was a big part of what made this such a memorable run.
Monday marks a decade since Gareth Bale and the famous “taxi for Maicon” evisceration in the 3-1 win against the European champions Inter, but that was just one of many landmark moments. There was Peter Crouch’s winner in Milan, Bale’s San Siro hat-trick and Spurs starting in the most Spursy way imaginable by falling 3-0 down against Young Boys inside half an hour of the group-stage play-off.
But there were so many other, lesser-known, moments that made the campaign so memorable. First-team coach Tim Sherwood advising Redknapp to take Bale off when trailing Inter 4-0 at half-time to rest him for the weekend’s game, former Spurs player Kevin-Prince Boateng acting as peacemaker when Gennaro Gattuso wanted to carry on his beef with Joe Jordan into the San Siro tunnel and the Tottenham players heading to a Berne sports shop to try and buy astroturf boots to play on Young Boys’ plastic pitch.
With the help of the manager, players, coaches, media, fans and even family members that were there, this is the story of the run that began Tottenham’s journey from nearly men to established European power.
Spurs’ passage through to the Champions League qualification round was secured on May 5, 2010 with a 1-0 win away at the Etihad, in what was essentially a play-off against fifth-placed Manchester City. Crouch’s winning goal sparked wild scenes in the away end, and given everything that has followed for Spurs made the game arguably the club’s most important result of modern times.
At the time, teams like Spurs simply did not qualify for the Champions League. Not since the 2002-03 season, when Newcastle did it, had a club other than the “Big Four” or Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool competed in the competition’s group stages. And not since Liverpool in 2001-02 had an English team made their debut in the Champions League (rebranded from the European Cup in 1992).
Spurs then were doing something different, and the fact that they didn’t qualify for the competition again until 2016 somehow made the 2010-11 run all the more special. An unforgettable period that sits in perfect isolation.
Less than two years previously, Spurs sat bottom of the Premier League table having picked up two points from their first eight games. Manager Juande Ramos was sacked and replaced by Redknapp, who set about restoring the confidence of the players.
He did this with his words but also with his deeds, backing them to win games with a positive 4-4-2 formation and making decisions like trusting the flyweight Luka Modric to play in a two-man central midfield, even in the hurly-burly of the Premier League.
“We had an open team, an attacking team, a team that always tried to win games,” Redknapp says now, 10 years on from a run that is probably the high point of his managerial career.
Spurs’ Champions League campaign nearly ended before it had begun, however. Prior to taking their place for the group stages, and with it the game-changing £30 million windfall, they had to navigate a qualifier against Young Boys. These qualifiers often felt like formalities but both Everton and Newcastle had lost to them in the not-too-distant past. And for a club as fatalistic as Tottenham, undoing all the good work of the previous season by losing a play-off felt like all too plausible a scenario.
That sense heightened among Redknapp and his staff the night before the game when the team trained on Young Boys’ artificial pitch. The players were uncomfortable, struggling to keep their footing, and the following morning some even headed into the city centre to try to track down pairs of astroturfs. As preparation goes, it was more Powerleague than Champions League. The kind of high jinks that are hard to imagine in the homogeneous, uber-slick UEFA world of 2020.
Redknapp was getting agitated, despite the reassuring words of first-team coach Clive Allen, whose message after scouting Young Boys was simple: “If we turn up, we’ll be fine.”
But for the first half-hour, Spurs didn’t. They were 3-0 down inside 28 minutes, and it was very nearly 4-0 when Moreno Costanzo’s free kick whistled just over the bar. “Clive said they were useless so I turned to him on the bench and said, ‘I thought you said they were useless’,” says Redknapp. Allen remembers the exchange with a touch more swearing.
Redknapp threw on Tom Huddlestone after 36 minutes, then Niko Kranjcar at half-time and, much to his and Allen’s relief, Spurs fought back with goals from Sebastian Bassong and Roman Pavlyuchenko. A 3-2 defeat with those precious two away goals felt like a bullet had been dodged, and Spurs duly won the return leg 4-0 to secure their passage through to the group stages. In a portent of what was to come, Bale was the star of the show but didn’t get on the scoresheet — claiming three assists and winning a penalty as Crouch claimed a hat-trick.
Tottenham were drawn in a group with the competition’s holders Inter, Dutch champions FC Twente and Bundesliga side Werder Bremen. For supporters there was a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
“Part of me was still stuck in the little Tottenham mindset of thinking we’ll lose to the big boys, but once we were in the group stages we didn’t care who we got,” says Katrina Law, a season-ticket holder since 1998. “Inter were the holders but we didn’t care — it was just like ‘bring it on, let’s go to San Siro.’ And we didn’t really have expectations because we’d never tested ourselves against teams at that level.”
Spurs were liberated by successfully navigating the qualifier, but at every turn there were new things to get used to: the media demands, the quality of opposition, the famous Champions League anthem. On the pitch, the team quickly learned that any mistakes would be punished. In the first game of the group, Tottenham led 2-0 through an own goal and a Crouch header, only for Bremen to fight back and earn a 2-2 draw.
Two weeks later, Spurs hosted Twente in the first Champions League or European Cup game proper at White Hart Lane since 1962. Lost amid the mayhem of the Inter and Milan victories, this was another occasion to savour. With the rain lashing down, Tottenham announced themselves in the competition with a performance fizzing with invention and belief.
Lining up with Pavlyuchenko and Crouch up front, supported by an uber-attacking midfield of Rafael van der Vaart, Modric, Huddlestone and Bale, Spurs went after their opponents from the start.
Summer signing Van der Vaart, up against a Dutch side, played like a man possessed — for better and worse. He scored a sensational goal, missed a penalty, and was sent off for two avoidable bookings.
“I will never forget that game,” Van der Vaart tells The Athletic . “It was so special because it was the first time playing at home in the Champions League for us, and those nights were special. Something special when you play during the week. The fans were so excited, we were excited, and we had the absolute feeling that we could mix it with the best teams in Europe.
“FC Twente were at the time really good and in Holland they were saying, ‘Oh, maybe we have a chance against Tottenham and they’re not that good, blah, blah, blah’. I was really motivated because it was against a club from my country so I wanted to prove them wrong.”
The Twente fans chanting in English, ‘You’re shit and you know you are’ to Van der Vaart further fuelled his motivation. “They were wrong,” he says, with a smile. “The second yellow card was smart from the defender but maybe I got myself a little bit too fired up to make stupid fouls.”
Prior to being sent off, Van der Vaart stepped aside when Spurs were awarded a second penalty. Pavlyuchenko scored it, and then another, before Bale wrapped up a 4-1 win in the 85th minute. Future Tottenham player Nacer Chadli scored for Twente.
“Champions League — we’re having a laugh,’’ sung the drenched but delighted Tottenham supporters.
Tottenham’s next two matches, both against Inter, are among the most famous in their history — a 4-3 away defeat followed by a 3-1 win at White Hart Lane.
Much of the events of the nights have been reminisced about so often that they scarcely bear repeating: the Bale hat-trick at San Siro, “Taxi for Maicon” at White Hart Lane where the Inter defender, considered the world’s best right-back, was torn to pieces.
But revisiting the games is a reminder of why they are so established in folklore. First of all, that Inter team: the legendary Javier Zanetti; Wesley Sneijder, who finished fourth in that year’s Ballon d’Or; Samuel Eto’o, probably Europe’s foremost No 9 at the time; grizzled defenders like Lucio and Walter Samuel.
It’s also worth remembering how new and exciting this was for Spurs. “I’d never been on a European trip,” says Law. “Inter away was my first European away trip and I was so excited. Literally buzzing.” On a warm October day, fans spilled into the Milan streets, scarcely believing that this could be real.
That dreamy feeling quickly gave way to something approaching a nightmare once the game started, however. Watching the game back, Inter are frighteningly good in the first half — playing the kind of free-flowing football not normally associated with Benitez sides (the Spaniard had replaced Mourinho four months earlier). Sneijder is dropping into pockets of space threading through balls, Eto’o is darting in between Spurs defenders who don’t know where to look, while a shaggy-haired 18-year-old Philippe Coutinho is so mesmerising with the ball at his feet that at one point he turns Alan Hutton three times in the same sequence.
After 11 minutes, Spurs are 2-0 down and have had goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes sent off, after 14 it’s 3-0, and by 35 it’s 4-0. Maicon, blissfully unaware of what is to come in the next game and a half, then has a couple of decent efforts saved by Carlo Cudicini to prevent it being 5-0.
Goalkeeping coach Perry Suckling tells a nice story of Cudicini preparing to come on to face an Eto’o penalty after Gomes’ red card and saying to the frenzied coaches: “Relax, I’ve been playing in goal all my life and know what to do.”
That kind of phlegmatic attitude was required at half-time when the players traipsed in, four goals and a man down. The heroics that followed from Bale are the stuff of legend, but what’s less known is that, had first-team coach Sherwood had his way, Bale would not have been on the pitch for the second half.
A laughing Les Ferdinand, also a first-team coach at the time, takes up the story. “I remember very clearly we came down from the stands where we’d been watching the game, and Tim said, ‘Harry you might as well save him for the weekend, we’ve got a game coming up (at home against Everton) that’s going to be more important’.
“I always remember Harry saying something like, ‘You’re crazy, he’s our best player’. We were all thinking, ‘We’re 4-0 down, what do you do? Do you shore it up? Do you take Gareth off? Harry went, ‘Nah, nah, I’m leaving him’.
“After that discussion between the coaches and Harry, we went around all the players giving instructions. When you’re 4-0 down at half-time you always just say, ‘Win this half. Win this half, whatever the scoreline is, win this half so it doesn’t turn into a rout’.
“To be honest looking around the changing rooms, you say the right things but I’m not sure everyone was turned in. They were probably thinking, we’d be happy to draw it!
“At 4-0 down it was looking like it could be six or seven. But Gareth was absolutely sensational. We always knew Gareth had it in him to put out performances like that. He was just growing and growing and growing in confidence. And you’ll always have one night in your career when you’ll think what was the one night that really made me. And he’ll look back on that night in that way.
“Maicon was seen as the best right-back in the world at the time, but in that second half there was no one on the planet that would have stopped Gareth Bale.”
Explaining why he didn’t entertain Sherwood’s idea of taking off Bale, Redknapp says: “I just thought we needed to keep some kind of threat of a counter-attack. It didn’t enter my mind to take him off really. He’s such an amazing player.
“I just said to the boys, ‘We’re playing for our pride lads, we don’t want to get smashed up. The whole world’s looking at the game, let’s go out and put in a second-half performance, let’s give it a go’. And that’s what we did.”
It is ultimately what Spurs did, but Inter were so comfortable stroking the ball around at the start of the second half that, watching it back now, even though you know what’s coming, you still can’t quite believe Spurs are going to get back into the game. It’s the hosts who are on the attack seven minutes into the second half when Jermaine Jenas slides in, the ball falls to Crouch, and he lays it off to Bale well inside his own half. Bale screeches past Zanetti, Maicon and a despairing Samuel before arrowing a finish past Julio Cesar.
Inter regroup and create some chances, but Bale scores a second in the 90th minute after destroying Zanetti again. Maicon came in for the most amount of criticism following the return game, but Zanetti can count himself a little fortunate that his mode of transport home from this game was never speculated on.
Especially as he again can’t get back time for Bale’s third, which comes pretty much straight from kick-off following great work from Aaron Lennon.
Spurs didn’t manage to grab what would have been the unlikeliest of equalisers, but a star had been born, and all anyone wanted to talk about afterwards was Bale. Typically, the man himself tried to play down his achievements, but what he had done transformed not only his own career but how Tottenham viewed themselves. Despite losing, the sense that they belonged at this level, suggested by the Twente victory, was rubber-stamped.
“What was weird about this game was I don’t think I’ve ever played in a game where I’ve got beat and it felt like a win,” Jenas said in 2018. And it was the game that started our Champions League journey and shot this guy (Bale) into the stratosphere and fame and on everybody’s radar.
“Going into the second game, having done what we did in the second half of that first game, we were like… that fear had gone. We knew we had the beating of them and with Gaz in this form, he was unplayable, he really was.”
Bale’s performance in the return game was actually better than in Milan, and his freewheeling display at White Hart Lane reflected the fact that any inferiority complex playing the European champions had been shredded by what had happened at San Siro. A couple of weeks on, Spurs couldn’t wait to get stuck into a team that suddenly felt not so much wily and experienced, but just really, really old.
They were helped by the fact that Inter had appeared to underestimate them, turning up in north London seemingly without a plan to stop Bale. “It was quite amazing that they came down that night and gave Maicon no cover,” Redknapp says. “I thought they’d stick someone in front of him and double up on Gareth all night, maybe even with another right-back in front of him to try to make sure that he couldn’t get on the ball or if he did wouldn’t have space to run into.
“But they left Maicon out there isolated against him with a very narrow midfield. Really it was unbelievable. It was very unlike Benitez.
“Maybe he didn’t like Maicon,” Redknapp says, smiling. “I mean Gareth absolutely destroyed his career almost didn’t he? It was one of the biggest chasings anyone’s ever got, and he did the same thing to him when they came back to Tottenham for the return game. It was at our ground, we had great attacking players, so I just said from the first whistle let them know what we’re about tonight. And get it to Gareth at every opportunity.
“I don’t know if it was arrogance on their part, maybe they thought, ‘We don’t need to take this geezer too seriously’ — that he had the game of his life at San Siro,” says Ferdinand, who as usual watched the game from up in the stands.
“Even before the game because of the comeback at San Siro there was a belief that we could win. Normally with Italian sides in the past, you knew if they went 1-0 up, they could defend the lead. But there wasn’t that feeling in the dressing room. It was more, we can go and win this. From the first minute, we got at them.”
Ten years on, Maicon’s night remains as miserable a watch. On two occasions Bale rips past him from a standing start — first putting a cross in for Crouch that the striker volleys wide, before setting up a goal that is disallowed because the ball went out of play. Again though Maicon was not alone in being destroyed by Bale — Nwankwo Obiora and Lucio received similar treatment for Bale’s first and second assists respectively — but it was the Brazilian who became synonymous with the evening.
“Taxi for Maicon” sung the gleeful Tottenham supporters. “I think Maicon would’ve happily paid for one back to his hotel,” says Alan Parry, who commentated on the game for Sky Sports and describes it and the San Siro game as the two best European matches he’s seen in his 50-year broadcasting career.
It’s a sentiment echoed by pretty much everyone who was there. Allen describes it as the best atmosphere he’s ever experienced at a game.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Maicon didn’t respond when contacted for this piece. He was though magnanimous at the time, telling reporters afterwards that: ”Bale is phenomenal. He played a great game and he is a great player, a great champion. We have to give great praise to him. We knew what he could do, but he was impossible to control.” Maicon joined Manchester City a couple of years later, exacting a modicum of revenge by coming on in their 2-1 win over Bale’s Spurs in November 2012 and now, aged 39, is still playing in Brazil.
As for the other Tottenham players, so dominant was Bale in the win over Inter that the supporting cast is often overlooked. The first goal was taken clinically by Van der Vaart from an excellent Modric assist, while Crouch and Pavlyuchenko both helped themselves to tap-ins after Roy of the Rovers work from Bale down the left. All three goalscorers instantly defer to Bale when reflecting on their role in the game.
Crouch said at the time: “He was ridiculous tonight, he was unbelievable. I know that nine times out of 10 he’s going to beat the defender and get a great ball in so, for me personally, it’s a dream,” while Van der Vaart and Pavlyuchenko still echo those sentiments. After describing how he played despite a hamstring injury that caused him to be taken off at half-time, Van der Vaart says: “But really this game was the game from Gareth. Absolutely smashing that defender… what’s his name, Maicon?”
A still awestruck Pavlyuchenko adds: “I know I’m credited for that third goal, but I’ve never really felt that I was the scorer. Because this is Bale’s goal — Gareth did everything for it, so I had a very easy job — not to miss from a very easy position.
“Whenever Bale got the ball and started running, it was something! When I saw it for the first time, watching from the side, I was in shock. I couldn’t believe that a human being can run as fast as he did for 90 minutes, non-stop. I think he wasn’t even human at that time — it felt more like he was a robot, a machine. Which could only have been stopped if it hit a brick wall. But even that wasn’t guaranteed — almost like he could run through a wall! Playing with Gareth was absolutely special, I enjoyed every minute of it — and that game is the kind of memory which one carries through their entire life.”
That sense that this is a night that can never be forgotten is shared by everyone else present at White Hart Lane. “Maicon was regarded by most people as the best right-back in the world and, honestly, Gareth made him look like a Sunday league pub player,” says Parry.
Ben Pearce, a Spurs beat reporter for more than a decade, describes the view from the press seats. “Bale was on our side for the second half, and the press box seats at White Hart Lane were right behind the subs. Probably about eight or nine rows back. Bale was on that touchline about 10 yards away, almost at ground level. To be that close — to see the power and the pace was unbelievable. I imagine it’s like being in the front row for the Olympics 100m final.
“And one of the things that makes someone great is when you know what someone’s going to do and you still can’t stop them.”
In the scrum of the mixed zone afterwards, Bale was relaxed and typically grounded as the world’s media thrust out their dictaphones trying to grab some time with the man of the moment. “I do remember just thinking how far he’d come from the pretty shy lad who was the second choice left-back that many people expected to leave,” Pearce says.
“So the contrast was amazing. You suddenly felt waiting in the mixed zone that you were waiting for a world star. And to go from where Spurs had been a couple of years earlier to here, beating the European champions and Bale becoming this global star was an amazing thing. It felt like the culmination of a journey for the player and the team in those two years.”
But despite this feeling like the end of one journey, there were no big celebrations for the Spurs players or staff. Bale said with brilliant understatement after the game that: “I just feel confident on the ball at the moment.”
In the Sky Sports studio meanwhile, Tottenham legend Glenn Hoddle remarked prophetically that he could see Bale one day joining Real Madrid or Barcelona. Though he added that Bale might have to play as a left-back there, a reminder that, as recently as the previous season, that was still considered Bale’s best position.
At this point, Redknapp was packing his things and heading for home. Having gone up to the boardroom to chat briefly with chairman Daniel Levy — “I think I might’ve got a well done from Daniel, and if Daniel says well done, you know you’ve done well!” — Redknapp jumped in his car and basked in the victory.
“I was punching the air every 15 minutes, people must have thought I was a nutter,” he says. “I put some music on — Whitney Houston and ‘That’s Life’ by Frank Sinatra.” Perhaps “My Way” would have been more appropriate.
“I got home,” Redknapp continues. “I had a tuna sandwich and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and went to bed.”
Though it felt like “job done” for Spurs, they still had a couple of group games to navigate. A 3-0 win at home to Werder Bremen and then a 3-3 draw at Twente meant Spurs topped the group having scored 18 goals in six matches. It’s funny, when speaking to people in and around the club at the time, the way in which these games appear to have been lost in the mists of time — like hazy memories from a particularly good night out.
In any case, once into the knockout stages, Spurs feared nobody, and there was a sense that something special was building. The last-16 draw meant a return to San Siro, this time to play AC Milan.
The Tottenham fans again descended on the city and those that were present recall vividly the fans waiting outside the team hotel cheering them on as they headed to the stadium, like townspeople sending the soldiers off to battle.
“After the group stages, everyone was thinking, ‘How far can we go here?’” Law says. “I remember as well it was February and it pissed it down and was freezing cold, torrential rain. We went back to the square but we were hiding in doorways. Then into the stadium and we were at the opposite end, because they flip it for Milan and Inter.”
Their supporters might have been in the opposite corner, but that first trip to Milan meant there was a feeling of familiarity and no fear factor. “Having done what we’d done against Inter, the players went in there with a confidence that they might not have had otherwise,” says Ferdinand. “It meant the stadium didn’t hold as many fears as it would have done.”
Van der Vaart agrees and says: “I really thought we could beat anybody. No problem that we play the next one against AC Milan or Real Madrid.”
Redknapp had been bullish at the end of the group stage, but by the time the Milan tie rolled around, he opted for a more balanced approach that saw Spurs sit deep and look to hit their illustrious opponents on the counter. Sandro and Wilson Palacios formed a highly effective double-pivot in front of the Spurs defence that nullified the combined attacking talents of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Robinho and Alexandre Pato. With Bale out injured meanwhile, Van der Vaart, Lennon and Steven Pienaar were entrusted with helping to support Crouch up front.
It was the sort of smart tactical performance that perhaps Redknapp doesn’t get enough credit for, and in so doing he outwitted his opposite number Massimiliano Allegri. Both sides had created decent chances, with Gomes outstanding in the Spurs goal, when Sandro made yet another interception in the 80th minute. He passed to Modric, who spotted Lennon in space on the right.
Lennon’s ability to wreak havoc on the right had been crucial throughout the run in preventing teams from focusing solely on stopping Bale down the left, and here he was again. “I can still see it so clearly Lennon running down the wing straight towards us. It was like it was in slow motion,” Law recalls.
In reality, Lennon was moving at the sort of pace associated with Bale, and after stepping past Mario Yepes he squared for Crouch to sweep home.
Crouch’s goal is one of so many memorable moments from Spurs’ Champions League run, but for many the defining image from the game is Gattuso squaring up to Spurs’ assistant manager Joe Jordan, after a shocking tackle by former Arsenal midfielder Mathieu Flamini on Vedran Corluka, and then headbutting him after the game. Both Milan players were lucky to escape red cards.
On a number of levels, Gattuso underestimated Jordan, one of the toughest men in football and fluent in Italian, having played for Milan in the 1980s. “Bloody hell. He’s a brave man, like me threatening Mike Tyson,” says Parry.
“He was fearsome, wasn’t he? A lovely, lovely guy actually, the cliche gentle giant off the field but fearsome on it and if you provoked him, it was like prodding a lion.”
Jordan’s wife and daughter Caroline were in the stands for the game and back in England, his youngest son Tom watched on TV.
“I can remember the incident that led up to the first dispute,” Tom says. “It was Corluka on the far side being tackled by Flamini, who’s done him, badly. Trying to read what’s going on, Dad is shouting over to Corluka, or one of the players close, asking, ‘Is he staying on? Is he coming off?’ And as that’s happening, Gattuso is coming over to the touchline, either getting a drink or speaking to their manager, and he’s speaking to Dad in Italian, saying something like ‘he’s faking it’, and Dad understands every word because he’s fluent in Italian.
“So maybe Gattuso thinks he’s not going to pick up on it, but Dad responds and tells him to do one, and then there’s this back and forth bickering and it ends up with a bit of a push and a shove, and then the game continues.
“I’m thinking first of all… you feel a bit wronged really, because it’s your dad and he’s nearly 60, and I remember Gattuso raising his hands and pushing him in the throat a little bit. Dad didn’t have his hands up. It was almost like a bit of a cheap shot. And I did get the feeling that that wouldn’t be that. I thought there would be something more.”
Tom was right to expect round two and, sure enough, Gattuso came back for more after the game, prompting Jordan to calmly take his glasses off and give them to a substitute. This was deemed an act of provocation and contributed to him being given a harsh touchline ban by UEFA ahead of the quarter-final against Real Madrid. Gattuso was given a four-game suspension for, in UEFA’s words, “assaulting Jordan after the match”.
“I remember the camera catching Gattuso and he’s walking over to the touchline,” Tom Jordan continues. “And I know my dad wouldn’t step back. He would hold his ground. I think he (Gattuso) shook Harry Redknapp’s hand and then he made a beeline for Dad, and was going for Dad. So Dad took his glasses off. They’re arguing and arguing and then Gattuso butts him. It wasn’t a headbutt where it’s going to break someone’s nose but you’d have felt it. So at that point I’m at home sitting on the edge of my seat.”
Jordan wasn’t shaken by the incident but it bothered him that it had overshadowed such a special win, and the performances of unsung heroes like Corluka and Michael Dawson. The fact that Jordan, 59 at the time, had been such a formidable player in his playing days only added to the media’s fascination with what had happened.
Gattuso’s attack reflected the fact that Milan had completely lost their discipline and, according to one of the Spurs staff, things got “a bit naughty” after the game. Gattuso wanted to continue the argument in the long tunnel that leads to the San Siro dressing rooms that are huddled away in a corner of the stadium, and it took former Spurs midfielder Boateng, who had missed the game through injury, to step in and defuse the situation.
Back at White Hart Lane for the second game, there was huge excitement but also unbearable tension. Milan were far better than in the first leg and had a greater threat with Boateng now available. The 34-year-old Clarence Seedorf meanwhile was masterful in midfield. “He absolutely killed me,” Van der Vaart says. “He was so good, so easy on the ball, so strong. We couldn’t get close to him that game, but also attacking they didn’t have that many big chances.”
Milan enjoyed 63 per cent possession and managed the game better than Spurs, who were uncharacteristically edgy with their passing. In defence, though, William Gallas was outstanding, clearing one off the line and organising the back line brilliantly.
It was a game also when Spurs really needed their supporters, who spent the last 10 minutes singing “Come on you Spurs” despite being gripped by nerves as Milan went for the equaliser.
“The crowd were amazing and gave us such a lift. We had to go out and make the most of that.” Redknapp says.
Many of them had never experienced tension like it and although Robinho, Pato and Robinho again all tested Gomes, Spurs hung on for a place in the last eight.
After the torrential rain of Milan, came the warm spring sunshine of Madrid. Spurs supporters drank and sang in the Plaza del Dos de Mayo, while the players acclimatised themselves with the Bernabeu. Jonathan Woodgate, a former Real Madrid player and now in his last season at Spurs, looked out at the majestic surroundings on the night before the game and described it as his favourite stadium in the world.
The following evening, shortly before kick-off, Corluka looked up at the imposing, packed stands and said to Modric: “I have a feeling the fans are hanging above my head.”
Spurs were already facing a stiff test against a terrifyingly strong Real team, managed by Mourinho and with a line-up that read: Casillas, Ramos, Pepe, Carvalho, Marcelo, Alonso, Khedira, Di Maria, Ozil, Ronaldo, Adebayor.
The task got harder when Lennon had to pull out after picking up an injury in the warm-up. He was replaced by Jenas, who was beaten to Ozil’s corner by Emmanuel Adebayor to head in the opening goal after just five minutes.
The key moment, though, was Crouch’s 14th-minute sending-off for two bookings, both for reckless tackles. Spurs had become so adept at recovering seemingly lost causes that they still believed they could pull off another miracle, but this was a step too far. That said, they still carried a threat in the first half and both Bale and Van der Vaart had decent openings.
Van der Vaart believes Spurs could still have produced another almighty upset: “Even with 10 men we had so much control, and it was just 1-0. After the red card I was changed at half-time for (Jermain) Defoe. I think we changed too early. Maybe if I’d stayed on we would still have lost 4-0 but I had the feeling that we were really in the game. I felt I could make a difference in that game. I knew that when you get a red card it’s normally the No 10 you take off, which I think is stupid because your best players you always want to have on the pitch. That’s why maybe I’m not a coach. Just play good players!”
Most people connected with Spurs though think the writing was on the wall from the moment Crouch was sent off. “Being a man down for so long against a team like that, led by Ronaldo, it was footballing suicide,” says Pavlyuchenko. “No chance of winning that whatsoever. But I’m still convinced that with 11 men we would’ve produced a much better result.”
At half-time, with the score at 1-0, Redknapp tried to gee the players up for another stirring comeback. There was a feeling though that perhaps Spurs might be nearing the end of the road. “The quality of the opposition was a big step up even from Inter, and you do get a sense sometimes that maybe it’s a bridge too far and you can’t keep riding your luck,” says Ferdinand. “You realise at some stage that you can’t keep doing it without it coming back to haunt you. And I think that’s what happened in the Real Madrid game.”
Goals from Adebayor, Di Maria and the world’s most expensive player Ronaldo (set up by the second-most expensive, Kaka) condemned Spurs to a 4-0 defeat that effectively ended their Champions League campaign.
After the game, Crouch felt awful about his rashness, and no-one needed to tell him how costly his red card was. “We didn’t say anything to Crouchy,” Van der Vaart says. “I think he knew how stupid it was. Maybe I’ve said something since but then you look at Crouchy and he’s so nice, so you love him again.”
Spurs flew straight home that night, though not before Mourinho had waited outside the dressing room to ask for some of the Spurs’ players shirts for his collection.
The return leg was a formality, even though Spurs fans allowed themselves to think that maybe somehow they could do something akin to Deportivo La Coruna overturning a 4-1 first-leg deficit to knock out AC Milan six years earlier. Alas, the end was nigh and after Mourinho’s packed pre-match press conference that felt like the return to England of a Hollywood star, Real won the second leg 1-0 thanks to a Ronaldo goal that Gomes fumbled into his own net. Mourinho left another calling card by cosying up to Bale and Modric prior to kick-off. Within a couple of years, both players were at Real Madrid.
Spurs were out, and by ending the season in fifth did not qualify for the following year’s Champions League. A series of unfortunate near-misses meant it would ultimately be five years before they returned to Europe’s top competition.
Despite the 2010-11 run not instantly leading to regular Champions League participation, it was hugely important for the modern-day Tottenham, helping to transform them from chronic underachievers to a much more serious outfit. “That season changed things,” says Chris Ramsey, who was part of the Spurs academy set-up at the time and later a first-team coach under Sherwood. “They started to be looked at with more respect than they were in the past, when they were seen as more of a cup team.”
“That season gave the club a taste of what the Champions League was all about,” Ferdinand says. “That’s what made them want to get back there year after year.
“And it’s great that the club’s got to that position where it’s a disappointment not to be in the Champions League because that was always the plan: we want to be a Champions League club, and not just for one season but on a regular basis. And they’ve done that. Anytime they’re out of it, it’s a disaster.”
Above all though, it was just so much fun.
“No other run has ever matched it,” says Law. “Reaching the final was obviously amazing but there was something so beautiful about doing it for the first time. And the fact that we didn’t get in again for a while afterwards just made it perfect in its own little way.
“I now go to all the European aways after Inter. Most of my tickets I just put in the bin, but I’ve kept every ticket from the games I went to from that campaign and they’re framed in my bedroom. And I didn’t do that for the 2019 campaign — even though we got to the final.”
As for the man who oversaw Spurs’ quarter-final run, Redknapp smiles as he reflects on an “amazing experience”. He then sighs and adds wistfully: “I loved it, loved every minute of it, really.”